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Sharansky on Palestinian Propaganda

Gary Kasparov is not the only chess prodigy making waves these days. Natan Sharansky has a piece on today’s Wall Street Journal Opinion page about the ongoing legal battle in France over media coverage of the alleged killing of Mohammed … Read More

Gary Kasparov is not the only chess prodigy making waves these days. Natan Sharansky has a piece on today’s Wall Street Journal Opinion page about the ongoing legal battle in France over media coverage of the alleged killing of Mohammed al-Dura. Al-Dura was the 12-year-old Palestinian boy seen huddling with his father behind a barrel amid a hail of Israeli bullets in September of 2000. The horrifying footage was (understandably) inescapable around that time and became an iconic media byte, launching anti-Israel rallying cries the world over. It certainly added heat, and blood, to the second intifada.

In a clip released soon after the attacks of September 11, Osama bin Laden said:

In the epitome of his arrogance and the peak of his media campaign in which he boasts of 'enduring freedom,' Bush must not forget the image of Mohammed al-Dura and his fellow Muslims in Palestine and Iraq. If he has forgotten, then we will not forget, God willing.

But almost immediately after the al-Dura footage aired, the circumstances surrounding the incident were called into question and the legitimacy of the 59-second clip itself became a matter for some contemplation. An inquiry by the IDF concluded that it would have been nearly impossible for al-Dura to have been hit by bullets fired from the Israeli’s positions. For those who doubt the findings of such an interested party, The Atlantic, sighting sources outside of the IDF, ran a fairly exhaustive and thought-provoking breakdown of the evidence. The New Republic, Commentary, and a German documentary also weighed in with similar conclusions.